Basil is your normal, everyday 16 year old boy. He likes to scroll through his Facebook newsfeed, hang out and laugh with friends, and kick around the soccer ball. His raging hormones manifest themselves in crude hand gestures and he often requires a little extra encouragement to do certain chores of the camp like washing a pot as he is visibly distracted by all the action around him. He is respectful, honest and the type of motivated, hardworking kid I would want to have in my classroom or my own circle of friends.

Basil is from the village of Shingal, one of several Yazidi settlements in the desert climate Sinjar District surrounding a mountainous landscape in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Northern Iraq. In the unfortunate draw of the geo-political lottery, that happens to be smack dab in the middle of Mosul, Iraq and Raqqa, Syria, the established capitals of ISIS in each respective country. To establish a seemless supply line would require the control of Sinjar. Everyone in Sinjar knew this, and everyone knew ISIS would eventually come. Luckily, the people had their own protective force, called the Peshmerga, who with basic military supplies, uniforms, weapons, and soldiers were tasked with the protection of the at-risk region.

The expansion of the caliphate whose lines are constantly changing as different rebel factions and military forces conquer or are conquered [trackingislam.com]

ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) or ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) as they have become widely known, actually prefer to go by their official name, the Islamic State. In 2014, they declared a caliphate, a political-religious region run by a Muslim leader and successor of Muhammad. Essentially, they established control of a real physical area on a map. Signaling that they would be violently expanding their power and perverse views of a peaceful religion, they dropped the geographically specific part of the acronym. However, monsters shouldn’t be empowered with being addressed as requested. Most people around the world afflicted by their reign of terror, refer to them simply Daash, which is a derogatory term sounding similar to their name in Arabic.

In keeping true with their unconscionably horrific vision, Daash have been marching forward with a genocidal effort, specifically targeting Yazidi people whom they believe to be devil worshippers. Yazidis are not Muslim and practice some customs, including pagan ones that are misunderstood and leveraged as hate by Daash. The practices are similar to how you might have a Christmas tree. Daash made no attempt to hide that they were coming to Sinjar to destroy the Yazidis, of which, different reports estimate around one million are a part of this ethnic and religious minority group.

Yazidi New Year’s Celebration [vox.com]

Basil didn’t give too much worry to this as a then 14 year old boy. A low, substandard wall of protection had been built, Shingal was halfway up a mountain, and the Peshmerga were there to protect them. They had fortification, elevation, and soldiers on their side.

Shingal, also referred to as Singschar sits at the Southern base of Sinjar Mountain, about 8km from the ridgeline. In early August, Daash started their siege of the Yazidi occupied Sinjar district, surrounding a group that had retreated to the mountain top as they massacred captured members of the minority group along the way. [Ezidi Press]

Shingal has had numerous operations to liberate it, notably in August 2014, December 2014, and February 2016. [reddit.com]

On August 3, 2014, everyone was just about falling asleep on their rooftops, a common practice in an area with extreme heat and no electricity. From this vantage point, just around 1am, people from Shingal could see lights moving in the distance, a clear indication that something was going to happen that night. As residents watched on, within a half hour, they could see the lights split into three distinct groups and slowly start coming toward the village at different angles of approach. Just around 2am, the first shots rang out, mixed with a slew of incomprehensible shouting. The neighbors were yelling, but only the sounds of confusion and fear were audible.

Before Basil could stand up, an explosion, likely from mortar fire, turned the top part of his neighbor’s home into rubble. His female neighbor was killed instantly, and her husband badly injured.

Basil got down off the rood and ran into his home with his four brothers, three sisters, and mother for safety. Bullets were flying in the village in a one way assault. According to Basil and echoed by another Yazidi man from two villages south of Shingal, no Peshmerga shots were fired. In fact, the military force the villagers were relying on protecting them was nowhere to be seen that night. The village thought they were finished as they had all heard about the brutal strength of Daash while knowing that the forces of evil had a lot of support from the rest of the Arab region that surrounded them.

Basil’s father went to get the injured neighbor’s Kalashnikov and with gun in hand, hurried down the mountain with other villagers in a heroic sprint to meet the enemy where they had advanced. As volleys of bullets were exchanged, the children looked on through the darkness to see the hot metal streaking through the sky.

Video from the Daash perspective of the attack on Shingal, August 3, 2014.

Between 3am and 4am, a silence fell on the village. Unsure of if any fighters were still outside and convinced their father had been killed, the family moved to the car they were luckily enough to have. Mom had told the older brother their only hope was to take the one road out of the village and go up the mountain. In this small car, they squeezed three families, a total of seventeen people. After a few short minutes of driving on this road, they got to the military checkpoint and found a barricade that had been locked and abandoned by the Peshmerga.

They followed the road back past their homes and took a different route to link with the up-mountain pass. As they were slowly puttering in their overloaded vehicle, a cell phone rang. It was their father who was clearly shaken, but still alive. He asked the car to turn around to come get him. When they pulled up to where he was, they weren’t sure who they were looking at. In the desert, Basil says it’s impossible to tell who you are fighting because the face is so dirty. They gave dad water, quickly exclaimed their surprise and joy that he was still alive and loaded him into the car now filled with eighteen people, next to their cousin’s wife who had been shot in the arm and was in severely deteriorating condition.

The car was headed over the mountain pass towards Kurdistan, a three hour drive on the other side. Headlights that had been following close behind them pulled up at the first allowable spot and shared news that the Peshmerga were not at their posts securing the road and it had been taken over by Daash. This was the point everyone became convinced that the Peshmerga were paid to simply not show up to their posts that night. Basil, his family, and several villages were completely surrounded. Without hope and without an actual plan, they drove back to his village of Shingal as Daash forces continued up the mountain coming closer and closer to making contact again.

The family stowed their car away someplace they thought it would be safe. They gathered some food and water and started up the mountain to a point of safety as the sun was rising and the temperature was growing unbearable for physical activity. Shouts from Daash hit them as they reached another group of militants who set up a line to stop people from an escape route up the mountain.

Finding an alternate way to avoid the blockade of bullets, Basil got to the top of the mountain around 8am carrying his sister on his shoulders and rested just long enough to catch his breath. He hadn’t any water as the little bit they were able to bring was being saved for the two youngest children.

What had actually happened to Basil’s father was that he had gotten thrown through the air by an RPG that landed right next to him, just like you see in the movies, Basil explained, trying to put the horror in a context I could understand. When they got to the top of the mountain, dad nearly collapsed and was in awful condition. Basil told him to stay put, and this 14 year old boy ran back down the mountain with a group of friends, not knowing what they would encounter.

He didn’t even have a weapon, but he luckily found a Kalashnikov on top of a Peshmerga uniform at an established yet unmanned post on the way down. With three clips of ammunition and an estimated 10,000 others now fighting, Basil and his friend took a position across from a blockade of cars. Daash militants were standing on top of the vehicles firing at them while three to four other fighters were firing from the shielded position behind them.

Daash were clearly outnumbered, but they had fire superiority. With an AK-47 packing decent power but abominable accuracy, the targets were too far away to hit. The Yazidi force that had gathered to repel the invasion had to contend with numerous types of high powered assault rifles that had an un-ending supply of ammunition as well as RPGs and various other heavy artillery.

Basil described the scene as being like a dream, an event he wasn’t actually there for. When he squeezed off the last bullet from his third and final clip, he ran back up the mountain to where his family was. On the way up, throat closing from thirst, he said he wished he was dead so he didn’t have to see all of that. People on either side of him were killed. Hurrying upwards as lines fell back, many people were too exhausted and had to stop for a rest. They too would be killed shortly.

A man from Shingal holds up pictures of his family, all of whom were executed by Daash after the attack on Sinjar, August 3, 2014 [Shared by Basil]

Peshmerga forces began showing up in the morning wearing plain clothes, allegedly so Daash wouldn’t kill them. They were targeted anyway as RPGs were repeatedly fired at them. After making significant ground up the mountain, at around 930am, Daash fell back to the line of the villages and raided them, taking all animals, money, gold, and valuables. They had secured control of the road leading to another village of 3,000. Forces moved down from Shingal and to that other village.

Basil and his family returned home to shower, grab clothes, and immediately left for Turkey. They started walking to Kurdistan from Sinjar with no food, the three hour car ride they were originally trying to make what seemed like a lifetime ago. They reached their destination the next afternoon as many people, including countless young children dropped to the ground and literally died of thirst all around them. As news of the attacks spread, roads clogged with traffic as those close by tried to flee to safety.

While Basil’s English was not good enough, nor my Arabic good enough to get a direct quote, one thing he said very clearly on his own was “In the mountain, there is nothing.” There was nothing for sleeping and no blankets as they suffered from exposure in freezing nighttime desert temperatures while getting inadequate rest on the rocky ground. They made it to Turkey where they spent almost two years in a now demolished refugee camp before coming to Kara Tepe and making it one step closer to the goal of settling in Europe.

Refugee Camp in Turkey where Basil lived before it was demolished.

Same Refugee Camp in Turkey after it was demolished.

Basil’s older brother was quick to make it into Germany before Europe closed its borders. While they now play the waiting game all too familiar to refugees, they try to keep their hope up. Today, they heard through the grapevine that UNHCR told another Iraqi about an EU deal just passed. The agreement says that anyone from Iraq who is in Greece and seeking asylum in Europe must either shelter in Greece for 5 years before they can apply or return to Turkey. Official announcements of this policy could not be verified, so even though I therefore don’t think it’s real, how Basil reacted to hearing such hope-crushing news was very real. Escaping from a place where he has been targeted with the mark of death for the belief system of his people, he just wants to get back to the life any teenage boy wants to enjoy. Still his fate is better than the Yazidis who have not made it out of Iraq.

Following the road from Shingal to the captured village of 3,000, Daash did what they have done to all Yazidis they seek to destroy. In a course of actions the UN has clearly called a genocide, a label even they don’t use lightly, Daash brutally and immediately slaughtered all of the men and small babies. Sometimes if Yazidi men agree to convert to Islam, they will be spared. Often times, they can pledge their allegiance and will still be murdered anyway. All of the women were abducted* and forced into a number of channels, all of which are beyond unbearable. For the full UN Genocide Commission report on the Yazidi crisis, click here.

Sex slavery is the most probable fate Yazidi women face. Daash have set up online slave auctions as well as slave farms where women are bought like sheep, an analogy one purchaser used to abuse and degrade a rare escapee after he had purchased her. Other women are given as sexual gifts to fighters, or traded/sold off to different militants repeatedly, often times in the double digits. Almost all are raped repeatedly, even at the age of 9 year olds. Many have killed themselves to escape the suffering.

This pattern of activity Daash clearly announces and celebrates is what compels mere children to sacrifice their innocence to fight, so that they may keep their lives in exchange. The unimaginable plan to wipe an entire people from the planet is what has Basil and his family slowly moving through red tape to get to safety on the other side of the world.

America has taken a hardline stance refusing to put boots on the ground and has scaled back drone activity even after Obama’s promise to “degrade and destroy ISIL.” The push into Sinjar starting on August 3, 2014 was enough to warrant a United States response in the form of an airstrike just a short week later and almost a full year later. An international coalition airdropped food, water, and medical supplies to the cut-off region, and through the use of force established evacuation routes for many, but not all of the trapped people. Shingal has seen been taken back from Daash control and now has a robust Peshmerga presence protecting it.

For now, Basil does what many refugees have confronted as the long enduring reality of their situation: he waits.

*While this video appears to be a staged production, it’s unclear as to whether Daash is behind it and the overall legitimacy of it is questionable. However, as it was shown to me by a crying Yazidi man in camp and represents a less violent version of some actual actions, I thought it important enough to link to.